March 21, 2014
Andres Viglucci
The Miami Herald
3511 NW 91st Avenue
Miami, FL 33172

RE: 1000 year old circles. What next? Penicillin? A Moon landing? Mozart? The Green Bay Packer Sweep? Obamacare? Disco? The Browning .50 caliber machine gun? Kipling? “Congress shall make no law…”? Duck Dynasty? Mendel? – Some comments on your Page 1 article about “The World Turned Upside Down” because of, you guessed it, a 1000 year old round hole in the ground.

Mr. Viglucci,

You have to love the Haitians. Whatever else they are or, maybe more importantly, what they aren’t they are very clean people. They are always washing up on the beach. [I exclude the Haitian cab driver who tried to beat my daughter out of some money last Saturday night. Particulars, regardless of their number, cannot a universal make.]

It’s les merdes from Quebec who, having escaped detection at our Northern borders, should be rounded up and sent to Gitmo.

I defy you to find 2 waitresses in a row on the boardwalk in Hollywood who have anything good to say about them other than “Thank God! They are finally gone.” Also, why would anybody put mayonnaise on their pizza?

Alas, like when you put your teeth in backwards and they don’t feel too bad, they are double-helixed into the warp and woof of quotidian Florida life.

Indeed, it is a strange tapestry that a newly arrived émigré encounters.

When I first got here, back when Monica was perfecting her knob polishing techniques, back when Donna Shalala was proclaiming with 100% absolute metaphysical certitude that we would all die from AIDS in 10 years, 3 things happened, 3 things stood out that could be correctly called uniquely South Florida.

#1 – A 350 pound Black man, a 350 pound Black man who could speak no English, a 350 Black man who could speak no English but did have 2 heads, went missing in the international arrivals section of Miami Airport.

He was flying from Haiti with a stopover here before flying on to North Carolina for medical reasons. He had a tumor growing out of the side of his jaw that looked like, to the untrained eye, a second head. Did I mention he weighed 350 pounds? Did I mention that he spoke no English? I did? Good?






He wandered away while switching planes.

Wandered away? 2 heads? 350 pound Black man? No English?

No need to wake McGriff the Crime Dog for this.

After all, how many 350 pound Black men who speak no English and have 2 heads could be wondering around the international arrivals section of Miami International Airport? First rate police work, a trait that is recognized world-wide, resulted in him being found in less than 3 days. 3 days. Honest

#2 – An armored car overturned in a Black neighborhood. Either side of $500,000 in small bills went out the door. Police, and I swear by all things that I hold with, said –A- they expected the residents to return the money right quick and then –B- if they didn’t return the money the people who picked it p off the ground would be arrested. Honest. That’s what they said.

If memory serves a calorically challenged 13 year old returned .85 cents he had found in the street. Not knowing what to do the police sent him to Disneyville for a long weekend. That was the only money recovered. Honest.

#3 – Anthony Lewis, a proud link in the distinguished chain of New York Times Pulitzer Prize winners beginning with Walter Duranty, said it was “culturally arrogant” for rich White 1st Worlders to criticize Pol Pot for murdering 1/3rd of his countrymen. Honest.

Ground was broken for a $30,000,000 condo project on a Miami estuary. A few swipes with a back hoe was all it took to uncover some unknown artifacts. A few more carefully planned shovel swipes revealed – Mirabile Dictu! – a circle. It was to be said to be 1,000 years old. Like the big cat on the mountain in Africa or Jimmy Buffett’s tattoo how it got there I haven’t a clue.

A circle. A 1,000 year old circle. The possibilities were endless.

The entrance to Avernus or Atlantis or both? The westernmost side of the Bermuda Triangle? The notorious Briar Patch? The heel stone for the first of many, many Summers of Recovery?

What is known is that development stopped.




18 years later – Ulysses had almost made it home to Penelope, Telemachus, and Bowser – and achingly dumb people, mostly White, still pay obeisance to a 1,000 year old hole in the ground. Who knows? If the North Shore Tequestas had not butchered the South Shore Tequestas into extinction perhaps they would have worked their way up to Pi.

I run the risk of being called “culturally arrogant” to suggest that Geometry – ask me how I know about rhomboids – was next on the Bucket List. Calculus? Algorithms? Imaginary numbers? Fuhgedaboutit.

Not only are we not in Kansas we aren’t even in Oz.

The boobies are running the hatch.

The loonies are in charge of the bin.

Honest.






PS – Here’s what happened to the Malaysian jet. Climate changed polar vortices, a condition caused by excessive air conditioning, swept the plane into the gravitational pull of the Bermuda Triangle. It was able to break free only to be involuntarily vectored on to a secret base that was started by Nixon in 1957. It is now funded by the Koch Brothers. No further bulletins will be issued.